An advocacy group, Women in Mining Africa (WiM-Africa), has called on African countries to move beyond the extraction and export of raw minerals and develop the processing, market intelligence, financial and commercial infrastructure required to influence the value and pricing of its mineral resources.

The organisation said Africa’s vast mineral endowment would remain an incomplete economic advantage unless the continent strengthened its capacity to participate in the systems through which minerals are priced, traded, financed and transformed into higher-value products.

The executive director of WiM-Africa, Dr Comfort Asokoro-Ogaji, is expected to advance the position at the Shanghai Metals Expo 2026 in China in November, where she will participate as a roundtable speaker.

According to a statement signed by Rita Babatunde, head, Media and Publicity, WiM-Africa, the roundtable, convened by Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), has the title “Eastern Pricing 2.0: Integrating Futures, Physical Markets, Industry and Finance for the Next Stage of Global Metals Pricing.”

Asokoro-Ogaji said the changing structure of the global metals market offered Africa an opportunity to reconsider its position in the international mineral economy.

According to her, the emergence of new centres of metals trading, processing, manufacturing and price discovery should prompt African governments, producers and institutions to develop the capacity to exert greater influence over the value of the continent’s resources.

“Africa cannot build pricing power simply by having minerals beneath its soil. We must put our African mineral ecosystem together — our producers, geological and market data, processing capacity, standards, laboratories, commodity exchanges, financial institutions and regional value chains — if we want to become more relevant in the markets where value is determined.”

The group’s position comes amid growing global competition for copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths and other minerals considered critical to industrialisation and the energy transition.

WiM-Africa said Africa’s response should not be limited to negotiating improved terms for the export of raw materials.